Album Reviews by Marshall Gu

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Dr. Dre – 2001

1. This is a track-by-track review of 2001. This album has 22 tracks on it that runs for 68 minutes. Some of these tracks aren’t worth talking about, such as the intro skit.

2. The piano backdrop in the chorus of “The Watcher” is fantastic. Meanwhile, Dr. Dre tells us that a lot has changed between the seven years from The Chronic and2001. Dr. Dre is now a family man, so expect different things than him rapping about smoking women and fucking weed.

3. Dr. Dre is now married. His wife leaves him a voicemail to tell him how much she misses him because he is “under a lot of pressure at work lately.” It turns out that Dr. Dre has missed his wife’s lovely call because he is too busy fucking bad bitches. You now think that everything that he said on “The Watcher” is a lie. He proudly tells listeners that his dick is eight inches. This might seem like a lie because we now know Dr. Dre is not a reliable narrator, but while 8 inches is indeed bigger than average, it does not qualify for pornstar dick status, so he’s likely telling the truth. Also, if Snoop Dogg gave the girl the number to his cellular phone, why is she calling his pager?

4. The album title is not a reference to the year it was released, but rather how many guests appear inside the album. And in case you forgot whose album this is as a result, Dr. Dre reminds us that it’s still Dre. When he’s not doing that, he has Snoop Dogg tell us.

5. Dr. Dre listens to the keyboards on “Still D.R.E.” and decides that he likes them enough to use them again for another track. He names this track “Big Ego’s” and places it right after “Still D.R.E.” Noticing that they are very similar, he slows down the keyboards on “Big Ego’s” in the hopes that everyone is too smoked up to notice. Unfortunately, I am sober, which I am now regretting. Unfortunately, I have also decided to do a track-by-track review, which I am now regretting.

6. Kurupt’s “You more of a bitch than a bitch” would make more sense if one was actually worse than the other, instead of being, y’know, the exact same thing.

7. I think it’s humorous that whenever Eminem says something like “STOP THE BEAT A MINUTE” as on “What’s the Difference,” or “AYO TURN THE BEAT UP A LITTLE BIT” as on “The Way I Am,” Dr. Dre and Mel Man choose not to listen to him and let the beat continue on as it were.

8. It turns out that Dr. Dre, true to being a doctor and all, understood that women want to fuck men just as much as men want to fuck women. This is an appreciated fact but also unnecessary since it is no longer the Elizabethan Era.

9. Despite what the title suggests, “Light Speed” is as mid-tempo as every other track here.

10. People who think that this album should be an instrumental have either forgotten to “Forgot About Dre” or have simply not made it this far on the album. The way the beat builds to a brief crescendo underneath Eminem who gets more and more frantic—starting at the 1:55 mark when the chainsaw buzz comes in—and ending with “Chika-chika-chika-chika Slim Shady” is pretty fantastic. In fact, I’d say that “Forget About Dre” is the best track in Dr. Dre’s discography. This is mostly thanks to Eminem, who, despite his chorused pleas that people shouldn’t forget about Dre, has made people forget about Dre. Also, Eminem was so fascinated by Dre’s strings that he’ll use them for every beat ever when he tries his hand at producing. Little did he know there was other stuff happening in the track as well.

11. After a brief cinematic intro, “The Next Episode” continues the beat from “Forgot About Dre.” Unlike “Big Ego’s,” however, this is not a huge issue because the song is only two minutes long and Snoop Dogg’s voice is captivating. It also segues sort of nicely into the next track—

12. —called “Let’s Get High,” which is also only two minutes long. The female voice in the chorus helps make the chorus one of the best on the album. “Let’s Get High” also segues nicely into the next track—

13. —called “Bitch Niggaz,” which is kind of a bummer following the excellent three-block track that preceded it.

14. ”The Car Bomb” is a skit that is a minute long, and gives away its ending in the title.

15. The next track is ”Murder Ink,” in which Dr. Dre remembers that, in addition to being used for skits, singing choruses and being degraded, women can rap too.

16. Hahaha misogyny. That was sarcasm, by the way. For an album that concerns itself with the near-future (at the time), this album sure had some dated ideas about what passed for humour.

17. There are a lot of people on “Some L.A. Niggaz” such that the word “some” is an understatement. The song is also not very good.

18. If 2001 were a video game on X-Box 360, you would get an achievement worth 5 gamerscore for finishing “Pause 4 Porno” and be embarrassed by it sitting on your gamer card for the rest of eternity. Pink eye is nothing to joke about. Neither is infidelity.

19. So it turns out that hoes can’t be housewives. But the question left unanswered is if a housewife can be a ho. Hittman’s “He caught up in the ho’s erotica / Exotic – she psychotic, rockin’ his Nautica / Soon he’ll need antibiotics” is a good line. Kurupt’s “See hoes eat dick like eggs and steak” is a bad line unless the girls that Kurupt gets with have been following bad Cosmopolitan advice for blowjobs and entered the fray with a knife and fork. “A bitch is a bitch, but a dog/Dogg is a man’s best friend” is vaguely humourous.

20. Have you ever wanted to hear no one except Hittman go it alone on a track on a Dr. Dre album? Because now you can!

21. There is a lot of violence on the streets of Compton, as characterized by the annoying chorus.

22. As a result of the amount of violence on the streets of Compton as described on the previous track, Dr. Dre has lost a homie. He raps about it with some cheesy but refreshing harp in the background while “Mary J. Blige sings in the background” (thanks rapgenius). Listeners are in a state of confusion, hoping for more tracks about the gangsta life. They hit the skip button and miss the unnecessarily long outro.

23. To elaborate on my previous thought, there are a lot of people who think that2001 would’ve been better as an instrumental release. They are wrong—dead wrong, in fact. Firstly, only a few of these beats stand out. Most of them play it too safe, while others are recycled versions of pre-existing beats. Secondly, many of these beats don’t bother with something called development, and play themselves out within measures such that an instrumental release would be very boring (unless he pulled a Donuts on us).

It’s definitely true that the a lot of the rapping on 2001 leaves a lot to be desired, either in subject matter or because Kurupt has smoked so much Cali-Cannabis that he’s no longer functional. But seriously, if you were thrown off by the lyrics on 2001, you either ignored the “Parental Advisory” sticker on the cover or mistook the marijuana leaf for a maple leaf. The bigger issue is that Dr. Dre has no idea if he wants to continue his gangster persona or if he wants to be a conscious rapper about the downsides of the gangster life. As a result, you have an album that doesn’t really know what it wants to say and ends up saying nothing at all.

24. It’s unfortunate that people from the 90’s didn’t realize that just because youcould fit 70 minutes on a CD, that did not mean you had to.